Behind the Circuit: Meet Julien Rizzo, Senior Product Manager
Product at Enode sits at the centre of how we build. It’s about understanding complex systems, solving hard problems with clarity and making things feel simple for the people who use our platform.
In this edition of Behind the Circuit, we speak with Julien Rizzo, Senior Product Manager for EV charging, about his path from fintech to energy, why the connectivity layer is so important and how he thinks about building both products and processes that last.
From fintech to energy
Julien grew up in South Africa and later moved to London, where he spent six years at Onfido. There, he worked across identity verification, fraud prevention and compliance — areas where the stakes are high and the systems behind the scenes are intricate.
“At Onfido we were designing the trust layer for the front door to the financial system,” he says. “The work was deeply technical, but the outcome had to feel simple. If the experience wasn’t seamless, trust disappeared.”
That mindset, removing complexity for the user by doing the hard work under the surface, stayed with him. It also helped him see the similarities between fintech and energy.
“Energy is going through the same shift banking went through a decade ago,” he explains. “People are engaging with their energy assets more often. The expectations are higher, the backend systems are more complex and the user experience needs to keep up. Coming from fintech helped me understand how to bridge that gap.”
Building the foundation for flexibility
As Senior PM for EV charging, Julien leads the work on Enode’s connectivity layer. It’s the core infrastructure that links our customers to EVs and chargers across hundreds of models and brands.
“My team’s mission is to build the foundation,” he explains. “We focus on linking, telemetry, controls and enabling partnerships. We do the heavy lifting of integrating with hundreds of different EV models and chargers, normalizing that data and ensuring rock-solid command reliability.”
This work enables everything that sits above it.
“It’s about enablement. We unlock the core features of these assets so that our customers and other teams at Enode can build managed charging use cases on top. If the connectivity layer isn’t robust, the smartest algorithm in the world won’t matter.”
Why energy and why Enode
What keeps Julien in the sector is the mix of technical depth and societal relevance.
“I find the energy sector endlessly fascinating,” he says. “It’s a unique space where you have to grapple with everything from fundamental physics and hardware to software, market dynamics and even geopolitics. To build something meaningful, you have to understand how all those layers interact.”
But what matters most to him is not just the complexity, but the purpose behind it.
“Energy is woven into the fabric of human development. It’s essential to how we live, but we have to figure out how to do it sustainably. At Enode, we are working at that exact intersection. We are using software to solve a hardware and physics problem, ensuring that we can continue to progress as a society without compromising the planet.”
Ownership and shaping how we work
As Enode has grown, our ways of working have evolved. Planning cycles became more demanding and Julien saw an opportunity to improve how we aligned across teams.
Julien saw how challenging and stressful it was and decided to redesign the process from the ground up. He built Enode’s quarterly product planning process from scratch: a framework that aligns every product team with long-term objectives while balancing near-term customer priorities.
“Ownership isn’t just about shipping your own features,” he adds. “It’s about taking responsibility for how the whole organisation operates. I saw a gap in how we collaborated, so I built the framework to fix it, and I’ve continued to iterate on it every quarter. The result is less stressful OKR planning and better alignment across Enode’s product and commercial teams.”
Life outside the screen
Away from work, Julien finds balance through movement and connection. Long walks, time at the gym or hosting friends with his husband help him reset. Music is another constant.
“Building the future of energy is a marathon measured in decades,” he says. “To keep going, I recharge by connecting with myself and those around me. It allows me to come back to the problem with fresh eyes, a full heart and, often, a better playlist.”
